Thanos Rising 4, What If...AvX 2

Thanos Rising 4
Aaron (w) and Bianchi and Pieruccini (a) and Svorcina (c)

Thanos is getting closer and closer to the Thanos we know today and it's all been at the urging of his mysterious would-be lover. He ravages world after world in the hopes that someday it will be enough to please her but she insists that he should be nothing short of a god and so no amount of worlds will ever be enough. Finally the truth comes to light for Thanos: the woman is not a real person, rather it is Death itself. He's horrified to find this but still, he's come this far, so he insists that she love him even if it means killing his own homeworld.

I don't know how much I like this recast of Thanos. It works fine, sure, and I don't know enough about Thanos to say that he wasn't a perfectly fine, inquisitive little boy at first, egged on by Death. The twist here is definitely scores better than the way the series had been pointing otherwise, which meant that a woman drove Thanos to become the universe's biggest murderer, taking blame somewhat off him and putting it on to her. At least here it's kind of saying "of course Death was behind this, Death is the only one who profits from Thanos." Still, in a way, it takes the blame a little bit off Thanos and that's a bit strange, all said. I suppose we like our villains more complicated now but I'm not sure it's really done that. Instead, I think it's complicated him less in the guise of complicating him more. Instead of killing machine with ever-unknown motives, we have a killing machine who is killing simply to kill and that's a little strange, right? Of course, they have to give him a deeper background as we launch into Infinity and, of course, as we'll start to see him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe not too long from now. I guess no other origin would have worked so neatly for Thanos and would have tied him so irrevocably to death as actually tying him so irrevocably to Death. Still, it feels a little weak and, if you haven't noticed from my faffing about here, I can't quite put my finger on what it is. One issue left in the miniseries as Thanos turns towards Titan and, likely, back towards Earth.

What If...AvX 2
Palmiotti (w) and Molina and N. Lee w/ Magyar (a) and Rosenberg (c)

Magneto has destroyed the helicarrier holding all of the Avengers while the Phoenix continues to rush towards Earth. The Avengers fare somewhat well, truth told, despite the helicarrier crumpling. They lose Falcon and Colleen Wing, both of whom I like very much but, frankly, it seems like it could have been a lot worse. Meanwhile, Magneto goes with Hope and Emma to the moon to await the Phoenix while Namor sort of kills Wolverine by beating him up pretty well and throwing him underwater, presumably not giving him a chance to heal. Cyclops and Iron Man shout a bit at one another but Cap directs their attention away, preferring to team up against Magneto and his plans over anything else. Up in space, the AvX space strike-team encounters the Phoenix and, as before, falls to it. However, in this reality, Hope takes on the Phoenix herself on the moon.

This one definitely moves better than the last. I still have some issues with the conceit of this changed reality, wherein Magneto and Namor snap so suddenly and are willing to kill the Avengers so readily. However, burying that a bit now that it's set and we're looking at this issue as it fits into this story, this reality is now playing out differently as Cyclops removes himself a little before the Phoenix attack to presumably ask what he and his X-Men have become if they're this willing to kill Avengers. It still, obviously, remains to be seen what the X-Men will think when a full-strength Phoenix comes back to Earth (in AvX, the full-strength Phoenix only appeared before the real events of the book and at the very end, when Scott went crazy and killed Xavier) but at least we're firmly on this track now and the book is stuttering a little less because of it. Some of the characters still feel a little copy-pasted and it's hard to pull a real identity out for many of them, which is a flaw now and could be a greater one going forward, though I don't think this series will go on long enough to delve too deeply into character for it to matter too much, but the art is pretty great and the story is now at least a bit more of a reasonable "what if" as, instead of asking "what if Magneto and Namor went a bit crazy and killed some of the Avengers before AvX," it's now asking "what if Hope did take on the Phoenix on the moon?" Better question to ask, really.